Was a blessing, unless it came at night,
And peered in your hut, with the cunning fright
Of a runaway convict; and even they
Were welcome, for talk’s sake, while they could stay.
Dave lived with me here for a while, and learned
The tricks of the bush, — how the snare was laid
In the wallaby track, how traps were made,
How ’possums and kangaroo rats were killed,
And when that was learned, I helped him to build
From mahogany slabs a good bush hut,
And showed him how sandal-wood logs were cut.
I lived up there with him days and days,
For I loved the lad for his honest ways.
I had only one fault to find: at first
Dave worked too hard; for a lad who was nursed,
As he was, in idleness, it was strange
How he cleared that sandal-wood off his range.
From the morning light till the light expired
He was always working, he never tired;
Till at length I began to think his will
Was too much settled on wealth, and still
When I looked at the lad’s brown face, and eye
Clear open, my heart gave such thought the lie.
But one day — for he read my mind — he laid
His hand on my shoulder: ‘Don’t be afraid,’
Said he, ‘that I’m seeking alone for pelf.
I work hard, friend; but ’tis not for myself.’
And he told me then, in his quiet tone,
Of a girl in Scotland, who was his own, —
His wife, — ’twas for her: ’twas all he could say,
And his clear eye brimmed as he turned away.
After that he told me the simple tale:
They had married for love, and she was to sail
For Australia when he wrote home and told
The oft-watched-for story of finding gold.
In a year he wrote, and his news was good:
He had bought some cattle and sold his wood.
He said, ‘Darling, I’ve only a hut, — but come.’
Friend, a husband’s heart is a true wife’s home;
And he knew she’d come. Then he turned his hand
To make neat the house, and prepare the land
For his crops and vines; and he made that place
Put on such a smiling and homelike face,
That when she came, and he showed her round
His sandal-wood and his crops in the ground,
And spoke of the future, they cried for joy,
The husband’s arm clasping his wife and boy.
Well, friend, if a little of heaven’s best bliss
Ever comes from the upper world to this,
It came into that manly bushman’s life,
And circled him round with the arms of his wife.
God bless that bright memory! Even to me,
A rough, lonely man, did she seem to be,
While living, an angel of God’s pure love,
And now I could pray to her face above.
And David he loved her as only a man
With a heart as large as was his heart can.
I wondered how they could have lived apart,
For he was her idol, and she his heart.
Friend, there isn’t much more of the tale to tell:
I was talking of angels awhile since. Well,
Now I’ll change to a devil, — ay, to a devil!
You needn’t start: if a spirit of evil
Ever came to this world its hate to slake
On mankind, it came as a Dukite Snake.
Like? Like the pictures you’ve seen of Sin,
A long red snake, — as if what was within
Was fire that gleamed through his glistening skin.
And his eyes! — if you could go down to hell
And come back to your fellows here and tell
What the fire was like, you could find no thing,
Here below on the earth, or up in the sky,
To compare it to but a Dukite’s eye!
Now, mark you, these Dukites don’t go alone:
There’s another near when you see but one;
And beware you of killing that one you see
Without finding the other; for you may be
More than twenty miles from the spot that night,
When camped, but you’re tracked by the lone Dukite,
That will follow your trail like Death or Fate,
And kill you as sure as you killed its mate!
Well, poor Dave Sloane had his young wife here
Three months, — ’twas just this time of the year.
He had teamed some sandal-wood to the Vasse,
And was homeward bound, when he saw in the grass
A long red snake: he had never been told
Of the Dukite’s ways, — he jumped to the road,
And smashed its flat head with the bullock-goad!
He was proud of the red skin, so he tied
Its tail to the cart, and the snake’s blood dyed
The bush on the path he followed that night.
He was early home, and the dead Dukite
Was flung at the door to be skinned next day.
At sunrise next morning he started away
To hunt up his cattle. A three hours’ ride
Brought him back: he gazed on his home with pride
And joy in his heart; he jumped from his horse
And entered — to look on his young wife’s corse,
And his dead child clutching his mother’s clothes
As in fright; and there, as he gazed, arose
From her breast, where ’twas resting, the gleaming head
Of the terrible Dukite, as if it said,
‘I’ve had vengeance, my foe: you took all I had.’
And so had the snake — David Sloane was mad!
I rode to his hut just by chance that night,
And there on the threshold the clear moonlight
Showed the two snakes dead. I pushed in the door
With an awful feeling of coming woe:
The dead was stretched on the moonlit floor,
The man held the hand of his wife, — his pride,
His poor life’s treasure, — and crouched by her side.
O God! I sank with the weight of the blow.
I touched and called him: he heeded me not,
So I dug her grave in a quiet spot,
And lifted them both, — her boy on her breast, —
And laid them down in the shade to rest.
Then I tried to take my poor friend away,
But he cried so woefully, ‘Let me stay
Till she comes again!’ that I had no heart
To try to persuade him then to part
From all that was left to him here, — her grave;
So I stayed by his side that night, and, save
One heart-cutting cry, he uttered no sound, —
O God! that wail — like the wail of a hound!
’Tis six long years since I heard that cry,
But ’twill ring in my ears till the day I die.
Since that fearful night no one has heard
Poor David Sloane utter sound or word.
You have seen to-day how he always goes:
He’s been given that suit of convict’s clothes
By some prison officer. On his back
You noticed a load like a peddler’s pack?
Well, that’s what he lives for: when reason went,
Still memory lived, for the days are spent
In searching for Dukites; and year by year
That bundle of skins is growing. ’Tis clear
That the Lord out of evil some good still takes;
For he’s clearing this bush of the Dukite snakes.
The Gaol
Penal Colony of Western Australia, 1857
The sun rose o’er dark Fremantle,
And the Sentry stood on the wall;
Above him, with white lines swinging,
The flag-staff, bare and tall:
The flag at its foot — the Mutiny Flag —
Was always fast to the line, —
For its sanguine field was a cry of fear,
And the Colony counted an hour a year
In the need of the blood-red sign.
The staff and the line, with its ruddy flash,
Like a threat or an evil-bode,
Were a monstrous whip with a crimson lash,
Fit sign for the penal code.
The Sentry leant on his rifle, and stood
By the mast, with a deep-drawn breath;
A stern-browed man, but there heaved a sigh
For the sight that greeted his downward eye
In the prison-square beneath.
In yellow garb, in soldier lines,
One hundred men in chains;
While the watchful warders, sword in hand,
With eyes suspicious keenly scanned
The links of the living lanes.
There, wary eyes met stony eyes,
And stony face met stone.
There was never a gleam of trust or truce;
In the covert thought of an iron loose,
Grim warder and ward were one. …
Henry Ebenezer Clay (b.1844 d.1896)
from Two and Two
V.
An arid, dusty landwind, wakens Herbert
From the Sahara of a dream; with lips
Parched, while a heat like powder frets the skin.
A drought is in the air; and the grey clouds
Hanging aloft, or mistlike on the hills,
Tell not of moisture to his practised eye, —
But thirsty heat, lapping the wilderness
With tongues of fire!
Stooping beside the waters,
He draws large draughts, till, eager to embrace
The rapture of their coolness, he leaps up
To cast aside his garments; but a black
And lurid pillar of smoke, seeming at hand
Tho’ leagues between them lie, has fascinated
His watchful gaze, and dashed a sudden fear
Thro’ all his veins, — for those devouring flames
Are raging homeward!
Snatching a light axe,
Wherewith he scarred the trees to mark his route,
He cuts a footing in the thick, smooth bark
Of a white-gum, whose branchy crown appears
High o’er the common woods; and, step by step,
Scaling its lofty pillar, gains the landing
Of a cross bough, and scans the distant glow.
‘Home! home!’ he cries: ‘Bucephalus, good nag!
Drink well, and splash the waters; for I trow
We go thro’ fires to-day!’
And with stretched arms
Half compassing the stately stem, he slides
Swift to the foot, and gains his steed, and girths
The saddle tightly; and without a thought
Of food, or perils he must brave, or ought
But one great fear — for those he left at home, —
Gives his brave nag the spur, and on, on, on,
Thro’ the thick boughs whose branches beat his face,
Whose stretched-out arms he, stooping, scarce avoids;
While not for thicket-thorns, nor trees down-fallen,
Nor boulders rough, nor banks precipitous
Of wild ravines where winter torrents streamed, —
Bucephalus makes pause, nor turns aside!
Now have they reached the rear-guard of the flames;
Black ruin girt about with fallen limbs
That smoulder as they lie.
On! on, good horse!
The heat grows fierce, the earth seems all aglow;
Branches are falling round them; forky tongues
Leap o’er the roadway that alone can save
Horse and his rider, from the battle-front
That lowers on either side!
On! on, good horse!
Brave rider, clasp your arms about his neck,
And cheer him, lest his terror leave no choice
But death, — death for ye both!
The hot flames wrestle:
Irruption fierce, mid seas of lava glow;
Devouring billows, feeding as they roll,
On bark and cones of Banksia, fronded Palms,
Ferns, Casuarinas; woods that scent the flames;
Charred trunks Xanthorrhoean, with their rods and reeds
Blazing; while veteran trees thro’ trunk and bough,
Time-hollowed, feel the rage of hidden fires,
Roaring and writhing thro’ their branchy flues,
With furnace heat: and over hill and plain
Rolls the dire flood, — a wilderness of ruin, —
A burning world!
Fly! fly, ye flocks and herds!
Ye horses, spurn the flames with sounding hoofs!
Seek safety — for no shelter can ye trust —
On some charred pasture where ye fed before!
And fly, good steed! and fly, brave youth; for those
Thou lovest are in danger!
Now the homesteads
Lie at his feet, and all the upper slope
Is blazing; while in vain the labourers toil,
With leafy boughs to beat the torrent back,
Swift rushing thro’ the cornfields.
‘Home!’ he cries;
And leaping to the earth a flaming brand
Plucks from the fires, and to the standing corn,
Hard by the doors of each imperilled home,
The torch applies; and beats the rising flames
Back on their fellows, — till the torrents meet,
Devouring and devoured, in mutual death.
So, when fierce foes upon the frontiers hang
Of his dear fatherland, the valorous hind,
Grown warrior in his country’s need, holds forth
The fatal torch to harvests he hath reared, —
Rather himself to hunger than to yield
Such forage to the spoiler.
Not a spark
Has touched the precious roof-trees; but, alas!
The golden grain, the labours of the year,
Lie black upon the smoking fields, unhoused,
Reaped with the brazen sickle of the flames.
Cattle on yonder hill rush to and fro,
Scared, lowing wildly, as the burning tide
Beats upward fiercely, and no outlet leaves,
Save one straight path arched overhead with fire!
Hurrah! a horseman thro’ the flaming gorge
Dashes, low bending o’er his foaming steed!
Unheard amid the roar the stockwhip smites
The riven air, and quivers on the flank
Of dazed cattle, that the archway view,
And dare not pass, and dare not turn again;
Bewildered, blinded, — till the lash
Decides and turns the balance of their fears;
And headlong plunging, snorting thro’ the flames,
The frantic herd are driven!
The archway bends,
And the boughs crack; and like a javelin
A splintered branch strikes, rooted in the earth.
Hurrah! the horseman hath the open gained:
Hurrah! — But his steed trembles, and his knees
May fail, ere he can pass that heaving bulk,
Asunder parting, — quivering to the fall!
Bucephalus bounds forward, and the boughs
Strike on him as they fall, and he has passed; —
But Frank! Frank Herbert! Frank the hero-boy! —
Where is he? — and the neighbours up the bank
Are hurrying; and Ruth and Elsie breathe
To learn if he among the fires hath perished,
In saving life that thousand-thousand-fold
Were nought to his.
And there the brave boy lies,
Under rough boughs that spared the flying steed,
But swept his rider down. The burning leaves
They tear away, and quench the smouldering trunk,
Within whose hollow Ruth and Elsie oft
Have sheltered from a shower. Then strong, rough hands,
Yet trembling in their eagerness, bear up
The cruel branches; — and the motion stirs
A splintered wound; and hark, they hear a groan.
‘Bless his dear heart,’ cries one, — ‘he is not dead,
And we may save him. Gently, gently, there:
Let me creep under, and the splinters loose
That bite his wound.’
And the strong men stand round,
And firmly, patiently, bear up such a load
Of massive boughs as forces the big drops
From their swart brows: and still the other seeks
To loosen without pain the jagged wood
That rankles in the poor boy’s wounded arm.
‘’Tis broken, sure enough; and badly, too’
He mutters: ‘Brave young master! I’d as lief
Have died myself, or broken every limb,
As see him suffer! Aye, he’ll never groan,
If he can hold his breath; but it is hard,
Hard, — very hard; and though I try my best
To save him pain, I feel the wincing spasms
At every touch. Now bear a hand; — yet stay, —
His foot is badly hurt: poor lad! poor fellow!
I doubt he has as lief the trees had struck
Another blow, and finished!’
And, at last,
The boughs are higher lifted, and a pale,
Scarce living form is borne down tenderly
To his sad home: and there are women’s tears,
And rough men dash their hands across their eyes,
And turn away; and Elsie hides her head,
Smothering weary sobs: and only Ruth —
Ruth with the anguish deepest at her heart —
Bears a brave face, and, bending over him,
Swaths his poor helpless limbs, and bathes his brow
With fragrant waters; and, amid the shade
Of darkened rooms, moves like a blessed spirit, —
A beauteous orb, — folding her lunar grey
Of sadness in the crescent-wings of love.
‘Humanitas’ (n.d.)
A Blackfellow’s Appeal
To the Editor of the Inquirer & Commercial News
My Dear Mr. Editor, — A short time ago as I was sauntering along one of the streets of Busselton on a gloomy evening I happened to meet an aged Chief of the name of Bungert, who complained bitterly to me that the Government had not forwarded the usual supply of blankets this season for distribution amongst his people, and requested that I would write to His Excellency on the subject. The enclosed is a translation of what he desired me to say, and if you think it worthy of a corner in your valuable journal you are welcome to it.
The Fremantle Press Anthology of Western Australian Poetry Page 6